The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has made a deal to trade future royalties on one of its most important inventions — the technology used in the nasal-spray vaccine FluMist — for payments that could reach $35-million.

Under arrangements in the deal, announced this week, a Toronto company called Drug Royalty Inc. will pay Michigan the money, and then that company, rather than the university, will receive future royalty payments from the company that sells FluMist. The patent expires in about 10 years, university officials said. If sales of the drug are especially good, the university could make more than $35-million.

FluMist has been on the market since its maker, MedImmune Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md., won approval for it, in 2003. MedImmune was recently acquired by Astra Zeneca.

About one-third of the money will go to the inventors; the rest will go to the university, which plans to earmark most of the funds to the school of public health, where vaccine research continues to be a priority.

According to The Ann Arbor News, FluMist has been a financial success for the university, bringing in more than $1-million in royalties and an additional $18-milllion windfall when the university cashed in its stock in a company that was the original licensee of the invention. That company was acquired by MedImmune.

Upfront purchases of universities’ patent royalties are becoming increasingly common. In May, New York University executed what is believed to be the biggest such deal with another company. It sold a portion of its rights to patents underlying the drug Remicade, which is used to fight rheumatoid arthritis and several other autoimmune diseases, for $650-million. —Goldie Blumenstyk